Boon Sheridan spent his Friday night the way most people across the country did: hanging with his friends and trying to catch Pokémon. He had a few drinks, caught a squirtle and headed to bed.

The next morning, Sheridan woke up to a handful of strangers standing in front of his house in Holyoke, Mass. A car drove up to the curb, then sat idle. It took a few minutes to sink in. Then he ran to his phone.

"Holy crap, my house is a gym," he said, spotting a Pokémon training center on top of his house, which used to be a church. "Well, this is weird."

Sheridan is among a growing number of homeowners, business managers and religious leaders across the country learning they're a lot more connected to the Pokémon Go phenomenon than they thought —and they don't have much of a say in the matter.

"I think lots of folks are trying to figure out what this really means," said Sheridan, 45, adding that one player told him another church listed as a Pokémon gym was kicking people out of the property. "It's clear no one was told what was coming."

“Are you training?”“Heck yeah, this is *my* gym!”“Cool, this is *my* house! We should be friends."

How the Pokéstops and gyms got there

Pokémon Go is owned by Niantic, a software company that spun off from Google's parent company Alphabet last year. It’s mapping data spans from a pool they built for another one of their augmented-reality games called Ingress. Launched in beta mode in 2011, Ingress became filled with landmarks known as “portals,” which were historical markers, public artwork and popular local businesses, Niantic CEO and founder John Hanke told Mashable earlier this week. Eventually, Ingress asked players to submit their own recommendations for portals.

"The Pokéstops are submitted by users, so obviously they're based on places people go," Hanke said. "We had essentially two and a half years of people going to all the places where they thought they should be able to play Ingress, so it's some pretty remote places.”

Ingress was the first big success story for location-based games, said Brett Oppegaard, a professor of mobile, location-based media at the University of Hawai'i. Pokémon Go will only build on that. But it also means that the real world and the digital world may collide in ways that, more often than not, will cause confusion and make people uncomfortable.

"Whether you want to be in the game or not, you’ll be in the game," Oppegaard said. "If it’s not Pokémon it’ll be geocaching or Ingress. That’s the unusual part about this. There’s not one game space. There are infinite game spaces, and they’re all layered on this invisible plane."

Pokémon Go's addictive nature has already sparked concerns about players trespassing, injuring themselves, getting mugged and being mistaken for a "suspicious person." Sheridan, a long-time Pokémon fan, said he was worried about people wandering by his property, which is poorly lit late at night. A few dozen people visited Sheridan's house Saturday, the last ones leaving sometime after 11 p.m.

"You know that old phrase, nothing good happens after 2 a.m.? I’d feel terrible if something happened outside my house late at night and I wasn’t there to help or if the space contributed to it," he said.

From right, Mia Melugin, 13, her brother Liam Melugin, 16, and their friend Joshua Loughren, 16, play Pokemon Go while sitting at the NorthPark Center mall in Dallas. A few moments after this picture was taken, a security guard ordered them to unplug their phones from the floor power outlet and keep moving. Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY

Andrew Lau, 23, and Wanda Voong, 21, found themselves in the middle of a grassy field in San Mateo Central Park in San Mateo, Calif., pursuing a “Bulbasaur” character from the Pokémon Go augmented reality mobile game in San Mateo, Calif. on July 10, 2016.
Laura Mandaro, USA TODAY

Jeffry Campanero, 25, Jeremy Castro, 29, and Ronsen Carinio, 25, all of San Francisco, in San Mateo, Calif., playing Pokemon Go. They travelled about 20 miles south of the city to play the augmented reality game, which has users hunt for characters. Many are in public parks. Laura Mandaro, USA TODAY

How to tweak the system

Some people have embraced their properties ties to Pokémon Go. Justin Hoenke, who owns a rectory and an old-church-turned-arts-center in Titusville, Pa., even put up a sign in front of his building after he learned it was a Pokéstop. It says "Gotta catch 'em all at Fidelia Hall."

There's just one problem. The Pokéstop is listed as Faith Temple Church.

"The most bummer part is that Niantic mislabeled our building," said Hoenke, 36.

If he had his way, he'd like to rename the Pokéstop. But he doesn't know how to get Niantic to do that.

After Sheridan discovered his gym, he looked for ways to contact Niantic about it. The Support page didn't list options for reporting issues with Pokéstops and gyms. But the option does exist under "report a high-priority issue," which takes you to the FAQs. It's unclear whether the option was available when the game was first released in the U.S.

There's the solution for disgruntled or concerned residents like Sheridan and Hoenke. But then there are property owners or managers who know next to nothing about Pokémon, much less have the app on their phones. It's unclear whether there's a recourse for them.

Where do we go from here

Ideally, Pokémon Go players would have an open mapping system where they could fix errors, easily report concerns and perhaps even inscribe disclaimers like suggested curfews from homeowners, Oppegaard said.

But that's not the world we live in — yet. Fans and outsiders alike have experienced growing pains, and Sheridan hopes that's all it'll amount to.

"I’m fascinated to see this as a little petri dish of my own," said Sheridan, 45, a designer. "I’m fascinated to see how this changes over time ... It’s not that I don’t care; it’s just that there’s no point in making a stink about it right now."

For now, he and Hoenke are going to keep an eye out for trouble, and have the other eye on the Pokemon Go app.